Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022698, Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:48:50 +0300

Subject
little Brom: addendum
Date
Body
Барбошин. (Поёт.) "Начнём, пожалуй..." Пойду, значит, ходить под вашими окнами, пока над вами будут витать Амур, Морфей и маленький Бром.
(The private detective Barboshin sings from Chaikovski's opera Eugene Onegin before he goes walking under the windows of Troshcheykin's flat, while Amor, Morpheus and little Brom hover over Troshcheykin and his wife. The Event, Act Three)

The author of To Morpheus (1816) and Amor and Hymen (1816), Pushkin never mentions Bromios ("the thunderer" or "he of the loud shout," an epithet of Dionysus, or Bacchus, the god of fertility, wine, and drama). But in his "anthological" poems (1833) Pushkin speaks of шумная Вакхова влага ("Bacchus's noisy liquid") and шумный заступник любви ("the noisy protector of love"), meaning wine each time. On the other hand, in the fragment "На углу маленькой площади" ("In the Corner of a Small Square," 1831) Pushkin uses the epithet шумный (noisy) as he speaks of a deceived husband:

** скоро удостоверился в неверности своей жены. Это чрезвычайно его расстроило. Он не знал на что решиться: притвориться ничего не примечающим казалось ему глупым; смеяться над несчастием столь обыкновенным — презрительным; сердиться не на шутку — слишком шумным; жаловаться с видом глубоко оскорблённого чувства — слишком смешным. К счастию, жена его явилась ему на помощь.
** soon found out that his wife was unfaithful. It threw him into great perplexity. He did not know what to do. It seemed to him that to pretend not to notice anything [the tactics adopted by Troshcheykin who knows that his wife is unfaithful to him with Revshin] would be stupid; to laugh at this so very common misfortune would be despicable; to get angry in earnest would be too noisy; to complain with an air of deeply offended feeling would be too ridiculous. Fortunately, his wife came to his aid.

One also remembers the opening line of Pushkin's famous poem: "Брожу ли я вдоль улиц шумных..." ("Whether I wander along noisy streets..." 1829).

Alexey Sklyarenko

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